Indifference, Love, Abuse, and Family

We have discussed many thematic issues in this book. Tonight, in your response here, use all that we have learned about organization and structure an argument and a paragraph. In your writing, consider the following question:

Are the Walls family a 'good' family?

Your blog response should include a thesis argument (one or two sentences that include both the argument and the claims that support this argument) and a paragraph that clearly focuses on proving ONE of your claims.

The House on Hobart Street

In your reading, you have encountered a number of descriptive images of the House on Hobart Street. Consider how Jeanette, her father Rex, her mother Rosemary, and her siblings interact with the house. What does this house help you to discuss about who they are and the conflicts that arise between and within them?

For this response, prepare 1-2 paragraphs (using the model for an organized paragraph that we discussed yesterday). Be sure you are using quoted evidence and proper citation. We will examine these paragraphs in class tomorrow.

Jeanette's Glass Castle

Jeanette Wall's explains her father's description of his 'wondrous' plans:

"Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have its own water-purification system. Dad had worked out the architecture and the floor plans and most of the mathematical calculations. He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he’d pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms. 

All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our Glass Castle." (Walls 25).


Use this description and FIND AN IMAGE OF YOUR OWN, and consider what this passage represents about the Walls family and what they value. Your image should help you to take this description out of the book and into the real world. What does this image of the Glass Castle mean beyond the Walls family? Beyond family? How can you connect between this image and one of your own?

Remember, your response should be a paragraph or two and use SPECIFIC WORDS AND PHRASES from the quotation above.